Scientific Method —

Self-promotion on Facebook correlates with narcissism

If someone regularly self-promotes on Facebook or MySpace, is he or she a …

Students who use technology for self-promotion tend to be more narcissistic than those who simply use technology to connect to others. That's according to a research paper by Flagler College psychology professor Meghan M. Saculla and Western Kentucky University psychology professor W. Pitt Derryberry, who set out to discover whether there was a correlation between moral judgment development, narcissism, and technology use. The paper will be presented at the 2011 American Educational Research Association conference, which begins at the end of this week.

The researchers observed 279 students' use of Electronic Media and Communication Devices (EMCD) to make posts and upload content to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. They also surveyed the students' about their own perceived usage patterns to see whether the data matched up. The researchers focused on narcissistic and self-promoting behavior, as well as moral development based on the research of Lawrence Kohlberg.

The researchers' main finding confirmed their previous suspicions: students who used technology and social media tools specifically to promote themselves and attempt to gain popularity tended to come off as narcissistic. Those students also tended to self-report as narcissistic, showing a correlation between perception and self-reporting. The researchers also discovered that male students tended to use technology less than female students, but that male students were more likely to behave in a narcissistic manner than females.

"[M]ales reported that they are more likely than females to use Facebook/MySpace as a vehicle for popularity, to use cell phones as a means of creating a medial identity, to isolate themselves with these technological devices, and to use Facebook/MySpace and cell phones for exhibitionistic display," reads the paper. "[T]hough females tend to use EMCDs more often than males, the attitudes of males regarding their EMCD usage appear to be more detrimental for social functioning."

(Despite this difference in attitudes, female students still ended up having more photos and friends associated with their Facebook or MySpace accounts than the male students.)

In addition to these findings, younger students were also observed using technology more than older students. However, those students also demonstrated a lesser ability to understand moral rights and wrongs on an individual basis (aka postconventional reasoning, as opposed to societal or legal rights and wrongs) than did upperclassmen.

Saculla and Derryberry noted that they did not observe much of a correlation between narcissism and postconventional reasoning, suggesting that it's possible to have a high level of self-interest while still caring about the welfare of others. However, they make note in the report that the majority of their sample was comprised of underclassmen, which likely limited their ability to observe any kind of correlation between those two traits.

There were other limitations to the study as well. The two researchers acknowledged that their sample contained more female students than male ones, which may have influenced some of the gender-based results. Additionally, the demographics of the students could have come into play as well. "For example, given the characteristics of the university from where the sample of the current study was obtained, this study's sample may be more rural, of lower socioeconomic status, and be overly representative of first-time college students than the general population," wrote the researchers.

Saculla and Derryberry make a point of saying the use of technology to isolate and promote one's self doesn't necessarily make you a narcissistic person. Rather, narcissistic people may find that EMCDs help amplify their already existing behavior, especially if those devices are used "as a replacement for face-to-face peer interactions or other venues that are beneficial for moral judgment growth."

If students are able to use technology to accompany their normal interactions instead of replacing them, they don't have much of a problem. So, who's going to post this story to their Facebook pages in hopes that it makes them look smart?

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui